Dr Pepper cartoon and original recipe
Beverage industry (non-alcoholic) / Virginia

Which of them REALLY invented ‘Dr Pepper’?

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Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

The town boomed when the railroad came through in 1856, and so in 1872 a former Confederate surgeon named Dr. Charles T. Pepper started a soon-to-be-thriving business dispensing patent medicines in a brick pharmacy in Rural Retreat, VA. He also spent time mixing mountain herbs, roots and seltzer into a fizzy brew.

One local story goes that the doctor’s daughter fell in love with Wade Morrison, Pepper’s assistant. The doctor wasn’t too pleased about that, so he sent her off to school. And he fired Morrison. “This story is probably not true,” says Mary Kegley, author of Wythe County Bicentennial Book, “because within the time frame, Dr. Pepper’s daughter would only have been around 5 at the time Morrison left.

“Dr. Charles T. Pepper also had a son, Louis or Louie, an optometrist who was also known as Dr. Pepper,” Kegley continues. “He worked part time in his father’s drug store and also claimed to have developed the formula for the drink.”

"Rural Retreat, VA drug store owned by Dr. Charles Pepper. The drug store burnt to the ground in 1999.
“Rural Retreat, VA drug store owned by Dr. Charles Pepper. The drug store burnt to the ground in 1999.

Morrison meantime moved to Texas and set up a pharmacy of his own, the Old Corner Drug Store at Fourth and Austin streets in Waco. He went on to fame and fortune, taking credit as the creator of the best-selling American soft drink we know as Dr Pepper. Charles T. Pepper got neither fame nor fortune out of the bargain.

The Dr Pepper Museum site credits Charles Alderton, a young pharmacist working at Wade Morrison’s drug store, with being the inventor of the now famous drink. The Old Corner Drug Store customers called the drink a “Waco” soda, and it became quite popular at the soda fountain. Morrison began selling batches of the mix, drugstore to drugstore in 1885, and promoted it as a tonic until 1891, when he opened a bottling plant. When he began marketing the syrup to area drugstores, Morrison renamed the drink after his old boss in Rural Retreat. Or not.

“Dr Pepper is named after Dr. Charles T. Pepper, an 1855 graduate of the University of Virginia Medical School,” concurs James A. Ball, the Sr. V.P. Corporate Communications for Dr. Pepper/Seven-Up Companies Inc. of Dallas. “Who practiced medicine at his pharmacy in Rural Retreat, VA in the late 1800s. The entire history of Dr Pepper was published in 1995 by author Jeffrey Rodengen. His book, authorized by me, is entitled The Legend of Dr Pepper/Seven-Up.”

Not everyone associated with the soft drink business agrees with that view.

Original Dr Pepper bottles at the Dublin Bottling Works and W.P. Kloster Museum in Dublin, Texas, 2014.
Original Dr Pepper bottles at the Dublin Bottling Works and W.P. Kloster Museum in Dublin, Texas, 2014.

“What we found was that according to the US Census, Morrison lived in the town of Christiansburg, VA and worked as a pharmacy clerk,” says Milly Walker, the Collections Manager/Curator for the Dublin Dr Pepper Bottling Co. Museum in Dublin, TX. “In that same census on the next page (if I remember correctly) is another Dr. Pepper and he has a daughter, Malinda or Malissa, who is only 16 to Morrison’s 17.

“If you understand that the census takers walked from house to house, you can tell they were near neighbors. This makes much more sense to me than Dr. Charles T. Pepper, 40 miles away in Rural Retreat. There is not one piece of evidence that Morrison ever worked for Dr. Charles T. Pepper in Rural Retreat, VA,” she says.

The remains of Dr. Charles Taylor Pepper rest with those of his wife and several children in Mountain View Cemetery overlooking the town he lived and worked in. He died in 1903 in his 73rd year. And his pharmacy? Despite its brush with greatness, it never became a tourist draw. It finally closed in 1994. “Nowadays, if you’re not big business, you’re not in business,” said W. Baynard Barton 3d, Rural Retreat’s last pharmacist.

sources: “Delve into Dr Pepper’s Origins in Rural Retreat” The Virginian-Pilot, September 1, 1996
“Rural Retreat Journal; Store Closes, and a Way of Life Is Just a Memory” NY Times April 16, 1994
http://www.houstonpress.com/2008-06-05/news/boot-legging-dr-pepper/2
http://www.freenewyork.net/dpfaq.html
http://www.wiw.org/~chris/drpepper/

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11 comments

  1. That is the true story of dr. pepper. His son took it to Waco when he died. Waco did actually make dr pepper, but the formula was made in Rural Retreat.

  2. As I sit here, 10 miles up Rte. 11 from Rural Retreat I firmly resolve not to tell my wife about this post. She’s a Wythe County native while I’m a transplant from Virginia Beach. When that woman gets her teeth into something she just won’t let go. A story about this controversy aired on PBS a couple years back and she spent the next week or two convincing me they were all wrong!

  3. I was Born in Marion and grew up hearing the story from the family. The way it went was, the Pharmacy assistant was supposed to mary the Pharmacist’s daughter, but stole the formula, which was made and served at the Rural Retreat “drug strore soda counter” and ran off with the recipe, getting credit for it’s formula. Mountain Dew was formulated in Marion, just a stone’s throw away.

  4. I am from Rural Retreat, Va and graduated from RRHS on June 14, 1951. I have been in Dr. Pepper’s drug store thousands of times after it became Cassell & Frye grocery store. Dr. Pepper’s house still stands on Richmond Ave. just below Sherwood Ave, where I grew up. In an upper field behind his house are two cherry trees growing side by side and my mother told me that his two oldest sons died from eating too many unripened cherries and died and he buried them there. Dr. Pepper made his drink out of tree roots, tree bark and sassafras roots. His drink was quite popular and he called it “My Concoction.” Dr. Pepper had an 11-year old daughter, who was said to be very beautiful, and after he hired Wade Morrison to be come a pharmacist, Wade fell in love with his daughter and Dr. Pepper tried to discourage the affair so later Mr. Morrison stole the recipe for the concoction and took his daughter and got on the Norfolk and Western train just across from the drug store and they ended up in Waco, Tx where he made a fortune off Dr. Pepper’s concoction. His daughter made him name it after he father, the original inventor. Dr. Pepper never made any money off his drink. He is buried in the Mt. View Cemetery in Rural Retreat, VA, which is surrounded by Big Walker and Little Brushy mountains.

  5. I have a mug that says Rural Retreat, home of Dr. Pepper. Unfortunately, that handle broke off. My father’s family lived in Rural Retreat for multiple generations, and I have so many wonderful childhood memories of long visits there, but when the train still stopped there, the old drugstore was still open, etc.

    The mug was bought in Rural Retreat by my brother on a visit there maybe 10 years ago.

    I have been unable to find anything like this on the web. Has anyone seen something similar? I have no idea where to look for “touristy” things about Rural Retreat.

    Thank you for any help you can provide.

  6. 10) PEPPER BROTHERS – About 1858 a large family of Peppers re-located to Bristol from Mt. Airy ( Rural Retreat), VA. James R., William H., Charles T., Jessee H., and John Givens Pepper.

    C.T. & J.G. purchase the business of Thomas & Campbell and operate as the Pepper Bros. Drug Store, located “at the sign of the Red Mortar”. Pepper Bros. first ad appears in October of 1866 and continue well into 1872.

    In 1873, J.G. Pepper is located on Main St. and advertising as a “sole proprietor.” In 1873 C.T. and W.H Pepper enter into a partnership with Dr. Jere Bunting. In 1875, J.G. was having a new home constructed and while inspecting the second floor, he fell and became fatally injured. In 1879, the Pepper & Bunting partnership was dissolved.

    C.T. Pepper was born in 1830, and he graduated from the University of Va. in 1855. In Nov. 1865, he is a member of the Bristol Masonic Fraternity. From 1870 to 1876, he is a Bristol-Goodson City Councilman. In 1875, he is on the Board of the Bristol Academy of Medicine and is the Deacon of Central Presbyterian Church. In 1879, he is Treasurer of the Bristol Academy of Medicine.

    A May 1879 advertisement notes that Dr. C.T. and Mrs. Pepper will erect another brick store. However, something occurred to change this plan, for in Aug. of 1879, C.T. and his family move back to Rural Retreat. There he opens a Pharmacy/Soda Fountain business. (It is from here that the “legend” about the Dr. Pepper soft drink begins).

    An 1892 ad notes Drs. Rhea & Pepper, Dentists.

    In 1870, Pepper Bros. prepared and sold “Pepper’s Celebrated & Aperient Tonic Bitters.” They also sold McClung & Betterton’s Eureka Bitters, manufactured in Knoxville,TN., Rosenheim’s Bitters , Plantation Bitters, and Stoughton’s Bitters. An April 1871 ad for Pepper’s Aperient & Tonic Bitters claimed it was for dyspepsia, diseases of the liver, stomach, headache, constipational, and all diseases arising from a torpid condition of the digestive organs.

  7. I remember that store very well. It was on the corner just across the railroad tracks leaving the big town of Rural Retreat V.A. Loved that town and it’s people dearly. Would not trade the place or people and the memories for nothing

  8. There is also a footnoted story of the formula being concocted by a teenager in Paris, Texas, Robert S. Lazenby, who later moved to Waco and met Morrison. Lazenby and his son-in-law ran the bottling company until the 1940s.

  9. Also, Morrison was in Austin, Texas 1872 while Dr. Pepper was in partnership with Jere Bunting in Bristol. The Morrison story just can’t be backed with footnotes, though he was a strong part of the formation of Dr Pepper.

  10. Dr. Charles Taylor Pepper’s only daughter wasn’t born until 1874, and by that time, Wade Morrison was 22 years old, and had already moved to Texas. Wade Morrison lived in Christiansburg, VA, he never lived near or in the same town as Dr. Charles was practicing in. It was actually Dr. William Alexander Reed Pepper of Christiansburg (he was Dr. Charles’ older brother) that Wade Morrison knew, and it was his daughter, Mary Ann “Minnie” Pepper, that Wade kept company with. Wade was born in 1852, Minnie was born in 1855. And Dr. W.A.R. Pepper had no problem with Wade and Minnie’s relationship. It ended because Wade’s entire family moved to TX in the very early 1870’s, and they were too young to get married at that time. Minnie was barley 16 and still in school, and Wade had just turned 18 or 19. Wade clerked in a drug store in Waco TX, saved his money, and bought the store. When Wade’s pharmacist concocted the medicinal drink in the 1880’s, he let Wade name it, and he named it after Dr. William Alexander Reed Pepper, his friend and mentor.

  11. Elsewhere in the search, it reported Dr. Regina Pepper a woman came up with the ingredients for Dr. Pepper and Cola and Pepsi was surprised to see it was a woman. Now what is true? Was it the pharmacist man or a woman?

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